Fred Waldron Phelps

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Alternative Title:
Fred Waldron Phelps

Fred Waldron Phelps, (born Nov. 13, 1929, Meridian, Miss.—died March 19, 2014, Topeka, Kan.), American church leader who preached a message of hatred against homosexuals in his position as the fiery founder (1955) of the independent Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka. Phelps was widely reviled for spreading his derisive gospel by picketing events that were apt to be heavily covered by the media, particularly the funerals of fallen soldiers and those of celebrities. The protest signs boasted such incendiary language as “God hates fags,” “You’re going to hell,” and “God hates you.” His church members, mostly made up of his family, infamously picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who in 1998 died several days after having been beaten and left tied to a fence. Phelps, a graduate (1964) of Washburn University School of Law, Topeka, successfully defended black plaintiffs in discrimination cases before being disbarred (1979) in Kansas for professional misconduct; by 1989 he had also stopped practicing at the federal level, again owing to misconduct charges. Phelps began holding public protests in 1991, convinced that the U.S. was damned for adopting a tolerant stance toward homosexuals, as evidenced by what he believed was God’s retribution—the deaths of U.S. servicemen. When Phelps began (2005) picketing military funerals, a number of legislatures established buffer zones to limit his involvement. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld (2011) his right to attend the functions as an expression of free speech but allowed the buffer zones to remain.